The Liège Incident

I've decided to try to concentrate on trying to build up the characters to portray a certain event in the history of my steampunk world. I'm going to focus on a fictionalized and greatly altered historical event, the Walloon Jacquerie. In the real world this was a semi spontaneous anarchist/worker's revolt that was put down by Belgium troops in the Liège area in 1886. I'm going to make it a little weirder and use it to introduce several power groups.

Fungoid in Liège

One of the main characters we've already met, Professor Emil. Next up is one of his creations an unholy melding of man and fungus and the final product of the professor's experiment into creating the perfect socialist society.

The sculpt so far.

Looking Back, Looking Forwards

I realized today that I've been posting on this blog for 6 months now. I thought I'd share some of my thoughts about it. First I think that my original goal of motivating myself has been met. Second my focus has definitely changed over that time. Getting a new job ate into a lot of the time I expected to have and I had to scale back my plans. On the plus side sculpting, with it's built in stops to let the putty dry, fits perfectly into my schedule. Plus I've found that I really enjoy it.

I also came to realize that the part of the hobby I like the best is the storytelling. I'm not a skilled writer so the best way I have of creating a world and showing others is with miniatures. While I enjoy playing games I'm perfectly satisfied with shaping a world that others might enjoy or play in.

Looking ahead I guess more of the same for the near future. More sculpting updates and I think I might try to tell a little more of the background I'm coming up with for my creations to live in. I'm excited to see where the next 6 months take me!

The Ghug

After working on 15s the monster sized Gug was a nice break. Also the fact that it is all organic and I don't have to worry about straight lines and hard details made it easy to sculpt.

I like the way he came together and I'm happiest with the texture on the skin. I stumbled on it accidentally while working on the torso and ended up redoing the legs afterwards. But in the end it was worth it. I used a square clay shaper to lightly work the texture in and tried to use it to emphasize the underlying shape. Then I came back and added some more random lines kinda crosshatching it. I think it gives a nice elephantine texture.

First encountered at the Siege of Delhi during the Mutiny the creatures known as "Ghug" can as quite a shock to the British troops. This particular creature was called Bhaksaka Gaja which roughly translated to " Eater of Elephants." British troops later came to discover that the creatures were summoned in a bloody ritual at Cawnpore by a sect of Thugee sorcerers. The Ghug were only matched by the steam powered Colossi that the British had been using as mobile siege weapons. The battles between the savage creatures and the clanking giants became a recurring story throughout the Indian Mutiny. 

Professor Emil

This is the first of my more steampunk style guys. I think the more caricature style definitely comes across better at this scale. At least with my current skill level. I used some plastic rod for his cane/pipe and it worked pretty well. I might try making a mold of him so I'm gonna hold off on painting him for a while.

Professor Emil 

While a famed mycologist and vocal socialist Professor Emil is known mostly for his role in the Walloon Jaquerie or as the British call it the Liege Incident. It is still unclear if he undertook his experiments understanding the outcome or was simply insane. The end result of course was carnage and the almost entire destruction of the city of Liege in an effort to eradicate his "Fungoid" creations. 

Gug

I'm not really happy with a setting unless it can feature huge monsters fighting with giant robots. So it was inevitable that I was going to add some creatures to my steampunk setting.

The Gug is a classic if lesser known creature from the Cthulhu mythos. I've always liked the distinctive and very alien arms on them. I wanted the creatures in my setting to have that same bizarre, alien feel without looking too extraterrestrial. More warped and beyond human imagination instead of creature feature or men from Mars.

My designs are strongly influenced by Guy Davis's artwork on BPRD. A must read as far as I'm concerned. And of course by Mike Mignola and Hellboy. My Gug is inspired by the creature that attacks Seattle in the epilogue of the first BPRD: Hell on Earth arc.

Sketch of Gug creature seen in Delhi during the Mutiny. 

Architectural Details

I need to start making some terrain to go with the Victorian 15s I've been working on. The problem is that buildings at that scale aren't that easy to make. Victorian buildings have a lot of detail to them and replicating it at that scale can take a lot of effort or money to buy HO scale details.

My plan instead is to make castings of details for myself. I've done this before when making buildings for Warhammer 40k. Though those pieces were obviously larger and easier to make.

One of the windows I cast.

And the same window used three times together.

On my list of pieces to make are doors, windows, shingles, and probably stone walls. I might do some cobblestone sections to for roads, sidewalks, etc. Still debating on doing chimney parts or just making them as I go. The advantages of all of these are that they can be made with a one piece mold, which are far easier and cheaper to make.

A set of steps and shingle patch with a Prussian for scale.

With these parts I can cast up pieces to make more complicated pieces. Dormers come to mind as combined with mansard roofs they are pretty typical of late 1800's architecture but fiddly to construct each time. This kind of thing would require a two piece mold though. I could cast each face separately but then I would have to deal with assembling it. It would allow me to mix and match pieces though. I'll have to play around with some mockups and see which way I want to go.